Page 197 - Afrika Must Unite

182 AFRICA MUST UNITE

factured goods of their industrialized partners, and sources of
cheap raw materials. The subsidy which they will receive in
return for assuming these obligations will be small compared
with the losses which they will suffer from perpetuating their
colonial status, losses which are to be measured not only in
terms of their own retarded economic, technical and cultural
development, but in the harm which they do the peoples of Africa
as a whole. The question must be raised as to where this subsidy
comes from. It is difficult to believe that it is a purely altruistic
contribution made by the European members of the M arket
to the cause of African well-being. Such subsidy must, in fact,
come out of the trading profits made from forcing down the
prices of prim ary products bought from the African countries
and raising the cost of the finished goods they are obliged to take
in exchange. It is also included in the cost of the projects which
constitute the subsidy, a good part of which returns to the
European contributors in the form of payments for materials,
services, salaries, and banking commissions and interest.
It is true that by joining they obtain a preferential market for
their cash crops and minerals in the territories of European
economic union. But the advantages of this are largely illusory
since most of the commodities which they export are goods which
the European partners would in any case have to buy from them.
On the other hand, they deprive themselves of the advantages
of meeting their own requirements in the world market and will
be bound to have to pay considerably more for everything they
buy, quite apart from the hindrances which the Common
M arket is bound to impose on their own internal industrial
development. Admittedly, the Rome Treaty introduces explicit
safeguards concerning tariff protection by the overseas terri­
tories of the European Economic Union. But in the circum­
stances, I am by no means confident that these safeguards will
prove effective. The ex-French colonies of Africa have plenty of
direct experience of the difficulties they have encountered in
setting up manufacturing industries in those cases where these
safeguards operate to the disadvantage of industries in France.
It is true, of course, that the producers of prim ary materials
are always at a disadvantage in bargaining with powerful m anu­
facturers in industrial countries. This naturally follows from their